


Bring May Flowers

by aurora_australis



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gift Giving, Phryne's Journey 2019 Challenge, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-30 20:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19034854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurora_australis/pseuds/aurora_australis
Summary: Four months, three days and five hours after he’d kissed her on that airfield she’d returned… with a gift.A fluffy reunion drabble for May's lovely Burmese pendant prompt, part of the 2019 Monthly Challenge,"Phryne's Journey".





	Bring May Flowers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lady_Lola_Lu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Lola_Lu/gifts).



> Inspired by May's lovely Burmese pendant prompt, part of the 2019 Monthly Challenge, ["Phryne's Journey"](https://missfisherchallenges.tumblr.com/post/184569942388/phrynes-journey-rangoon-burma).
> 
> Fluff. Honestly just… so much fluff. June is right around the corner, though, so this is what you get. ;-)
> 
> Many thanks to Fire_Sign for the beta read!

He lingered. There really was no other word for it and he didn’t feel like inventing an excuse anyway, so yes, he lingered. As the drinks slowed. As the party wound down. As the guests began to leave, one by one, until he was the last one left, leaning against the mantlepiece, whisky in hand. Lingering.

The sound of the front door closing behind Dr MacMillan should have made him nervous.

It didn’t.

Phryne had flown back into Melbourne two days earlier, promptly slept for a full 24 hours and then asked all her nearest and dearest over for a celebration to mark her return. The two of them had exchanged letters and telegrams during her journey, but she’d ultimately told him not to come after her - she wouldn’t be gone long enough to make the trip worth it. And she wasn’t. She’d stayed in London just long enough to visit with her mother and some friends, then turned around and headed back to Melbourne, taking a slightly more scenic route this time. Four months, three days and five hours after he’d kissed her on that airfield she’d returned.

And now, somehow, he wasn’t nervous at all.

Movement at the door caught his eye and then she was there, in a dress of green and black, a look of delight on her face. 

Damn he’d missed that look.

He raised his glass to her. “Welcome home, Miss Fisher.”

She grinned. “You already said that. Twice in fact. First when I called the station, and then again when you arrived tonight.”

“And I’ll keep on saying it. It’s good to have you back.”

“Just good?” she asked.

He shook his head fondly and sipped at his whisky. “Very good. Better?”

“Which is it, Jack?” she teased. “Very good, or better?”

“Well now you’re just fishing.”

She laughed and damn if he didn’t laugh with her. It was infectious, that laugh, especially when one was no longer interested in staying immune. 

“Perhaps,” she agreed. “But it’s nice to hear all the same.” She walked over to join him at the mantel. “Did you enjoy the party, Jack?”

“I did. I especially enjoyed hearing about all your adventures abroad. It was like having a bit of each stop brought back to Australia.” 

“I brought back more than stories, you know. A book for Jane, a scarf for Dot, some very good whisky for Mac. I even brought something back for you.”

“For me?” he asked. That _was_ unexpected.

“Of course. Close your eyes,” she instructed.

He tilted his head in surprise. “Well that can only lead to trouble for me.”

She shrugged. “It’s not my fault you’re easily led.”

He raised an eyebrow and looked at her with a slightly concerned expression on his face, not because he was actually worried about what she might do, but because he knew it positively delighted her to think he might be. 

With a grin, she repeated herself. “Close your eyes, Jack.”

When he still didn’t comply, she sighed, raised her hand to his eyes, and did it for him.

Jack secretly considered his gambit a huge success.

“Give me your hand,” she told him.

This time Jack did as she asked, holding out his right hand. He felt her place something in it, small and warm, and his brain worked overtime trying _not_ to think about where she may have been hiding it. She secured whatever it was in his palm before pulling away, her own hand lingering longer than it needed to as she did.

There seemed to be a lot of that going around tonight.

When she finally moved away, from both his face and his hand, Jack opened his eyes and blinked to readjust to the light. Then he looked down and saw what she had given him. It was a jade pendant, depicting flowers and fruit, with leaves trimming the outside of the piece. It was lovely. 

It was also not at all a gift he would expect anyone to get for him.

“Do you like it?” she asked. “I thought of you as soon as I saw it.”

“Did you?”

“Of course!”

“May I ask why?”

She laughed lightly. “Isn’t it obvious?”

He offered her a little smile and the pendant. “Pretend it’s not.”

“Very well.” With a flick of her wrist, she held it up on the mantelpiece with all the gravitas of one of her case denouements. Jack watched as she pointed with one well-manicured finger to the flower on the right on the pendant. “A sunflower, just like the type you have in your garden.”

Jack frowned in surprise. “How do you know I have sunflowers in my garden?”

“Jaaaack,” she began with a roll of her eyes. “Of course you have sunflowers in your garden. Thanks to Hugh’s courting efforts, last summer there was a new bouquet of them in my kitchen practically once a week, and while I don’t doubt the boy’s affections, I _do_ doubt he’d have the extra money for fresh flowers so often. Add to that the fact that there’s always just a bit of dirt under your nails when you’ve had time off, your repeated efforts to play Agony Aunt for our young lovebirds, and your latent romantic tendencies, and it’s a simple matter of deduction.”

“Well I wouldn’t call that simple at all, but yes, as it happens, I do have sunflowers in my garden.”

“Precisely. And here,” she pointed to the middle of the piece, “we have a cucumber.”

“I don’t grow cucumbers,” he told her, a little smugly. 

“No,” she agreed with a far too satisfactory expression, and Jack felt his smugness evaporate under the heat of her gaze. “No, this had nothing to do with your garden. The cucumber reminded me of you for other, shall we say, _conspicuous_ reasons.”

Jack tried, he really did, to shoot her a chastising look at that. “Do I want to know?”

“Jack, you’re a grown man. If I have to explain…”

This time the look was definitely chastising.

Her responding expression was all innocence, which was precisely as believable as it ever was. But, oh he'd missed this, this back and forth they had; serve, volley. repeat. And given the sheer joy he could see in her eyes behind her lowered lashes, she had as well. 

Still going for innocent, and still missing the mark by a mile, Phryne shrugged and explained. “It reminded me of the produce you offered for the guillotine demonstration, that’s all.”

“Miss Fisher, that doesn’t make it better.”

She laughed. “Now who has the dirty mind? And don’t think I didn’t know exactly what you were doing then, Jack Robinson. A naughty joke, and at a crime scene no less - who would have thought?”

“Not _entirely_ a joke,” he murmured into his whisky glass, and she laughed again.

Serve, volley, repeat.

“Well be that as it may, it always makes me smile to remember it.”

“Well I do like that.” He smiled back at her, and for a moment they just looked at each other, their gazes fixed firmly on the other. Lingering. 

Finally he dragged his eyes away and nodded back to the pendant. “And the last?” he asked.

The smile became a grin. “Oh that’s the best of all - it’s jackfruit!”

A laugh escaped Jack then that he was unused to hearing. Loud. Joyful. Free.

“Alright, yes, I will give you that one. I suppose my name would make you think of me,” he agreed, placing his now empty whisky glass on the mantel. 

“Oh, not just your name, Jack. A spiky outer skin, with a heart that is both sweet and spicy? If I didn’t know the actual etymology, I’d think it was named after you.”

He looked her over, all teasing smiles and laughing eyes, and made a decision. Reaching for the pendant, he took hold of her hand instead.

“Not so spiky anymore, I hope,” he said softly.

“No,” she agreed, slowly stroking the back of his hand with her finger. “And jade is associated with wisdom and balance too, so… anyway, I do hope you like it.” Jack hummed a non-committal affirmative, too focused on the movement of her hand in his to pay the pendant much mind, his attention decidedly elsewhere.

She remained quiet longer than he’d have expected, though, so he glanced back at her and was surprised to discover that she now looked, if he didn’t know any better, a little uncertain. And when she did speak again, the words were more rushed and she didn’t quite meet his eye, though she was observing him intently.

“I would have added a pin to the back, but I didn’t think it would take the weight,” she explained quickly. Still watching him carefully, Jack thought she seemed to be waiting for him to make a connection, or at least a comment, and when he didn’t do either, she huffed slightly. “This seemed like such a good idea in Burma,” she muttered.

Then, with a roll of her eyes, she reached up to touch the tiny swallow attached to her dress. As she did, his finger followed and they traced the shape of the small bird together. Whatever she was worried about seemed to abate with that, and she raised her chin up to look him in the eye once more.

“I have a thing for pins it seems,” she said quietly. “And what they can say.” She glanced at the pendant again. “Your kindness, your humour, your intelligence, your heart… I have a thing for all of it.”

Clarity suddenly broke over him like a wave. It was reciprocation. She understood everything he had been saying with that small gift so many months before and was returning it in kind.

I see you, I know you, I support you. 

I love you.

Jack nodded, briefly unable to reply. He coughed to clear the lump from his throat. 

“I love it,” he finally said. “It suits me. Thank you.”

Without breaking apart from her, he transferred the pendant to his free hand and looked at it again. “Burma, hmmm? A well-traveled piece of art. A bit like you.”

“Well, that suits you too, I think.”

He nodded then pulled her close to kiss her, thoroughly, his heart on his sleeve, hers in his hand. When she finally pulled away, for air he assumed and an ungentlemanly pride swept through him at the thought, he moved to put the pendant in his waistcoat pocket.

“Not next to your heart?” she teased. Romantic overture made and returned, she slid right back into their usual banter.

“Well it’s next to my stomach,” he explained. “Which I’ve heard is the fastest way to a man’s - ”

Her snort cut him off and he smiled. 

She reached over and tugged him closer by the same pocket, the tips of her fingers stroking both the pendant and his skin through his layers. 

“You know,” she began, “jade is said to promote peace.”

Now it was his turn to snort. “Not much chance of that with you around.”

“No, but you can hope.”

“Mmmm,” was his highly articulate reply. The stroking had persisted and Jack decided quite suddenly that he hated layers.

Phryne continued. “It’s also believed putting jade under your pillow will help you recall and understand your dreams.”

Jack looked at her for a moment, then made another decision.

“What if I put it under your pillow?” he asked.

Her responding smile was loving and joyous and not just a little bit wicked. “Well then, Jack, all your dreams will have already come true.”

“You seem awfully sure of yourself.”

“Come upstairs and I’ll make us both sure,” she promised.

“What if I already am? Sure, I mean.”

“Even better.” She leaned up to whisper in his ear. “Come upstairs, Jack.”

His cheek against hers, he nodded. She used their joined hands to pull him towards the door, up the stairs, and to her bedroom door. Then she turned and cupped his face in her palm.

“Welcome home, Jack.” 

And in the morning, he lingered.

\--------------------

**Burmese pendant depicting fruit and flowers in jade, circa 1930.**

**Author's Note:**

> Prior to 1989, the country of Myanmar was more commonly known as Burma, and sunflowers, cucumbers, and jackfruit are all grown there. No idea if those are ACTUALLY the plants depicted on the pendant, but they look pretty close, so let's all suspend any disbelief together, shall we? ;-)


End file.
